Curt Benjamin - Seven Brothers 2 - Prince of Dreams

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Book Information:
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Author: Curt Benjamin
Name: Prince of Dreams
Series: Volume One of Seven Brothers Trilogy
======================
PART ONE
THE ROAD TO DURFHAG
Chapter One
"So THIS is dying."
Llesho strained against his bonds, tormented by the fire burning in his gut and the icy sweat
dripping from his shivering body. In his brief moments of lucidity, he wondered how he could
burn and tremble with cold at the same time and where he was and how he had come to be a
prisoner again. In his delirium, Master Markko came to him as a winged beast with the claws of
a lion and the tail of a snake, or sometimes as a great bird with talons sharp as swords tearing
the entrails from his belly. Always Llesho heard the magician's voice echoing inside his head:
"Among the weak, yes; this is dying."
No escape. He knew, vaguely, that he cried out in his sleep, just as he knew that help wouldn't
come. . . .
"Are you waiting for someone?" Master Den rounded the rough wooden bench and sat next to
Llesho, quiet until the confusion had cleared from his face. "Your eyes were open, but you didn't
answer when I called."
"I was dreaming," Llesho answered, his voice still fogged with distant horror. "Remembering a
dream, actually."
A low waterfall chuckled in front of him, reminding him of where he was. The Imperial City of
Shan had many gardens, but the Imperial Water Garden in honor of Thousand Lakes Province
had become Llesho's special place, where he came to sort out his thoughts. Like him, the Water
Garden had taken some damage in the recent fighting. A delicate wooden bridge had burned to
ash, and Harnish raiders had trampled a section of marsh grasses beside a stream that had
flowed red with the blood of the fallen for many days. At the heart of the Imperial Water
Garden, however, the waterfall still poured its clean bounty into a stone basin that fed the
numerous streams winding among the river reeds. Water lilies still floated in the many protected
pools and the lotus still rose out of the mud on defiant stalks. The little stone altar to ChiChu, the
trickster god of laughter and tears, still lay hidden under a ledge beneath the chuckling water.
Like the garden, Llesho had survived and healed. He sat on the split log bench just beyond the
reach of the fine spray the waterfall kicked up, contemplating the altar to the trickster god—a
favored deity of an emperor fond of disguises and mentor to a young prince still learning how to
be a king—as if it would give up the secrets of the heavens. In his hand he held a quarter tael
of silver and a slip of paper, much wrinkled and dampened from the tight grip he held on it. With
a sideways look at Master Den, who was the trickster god ChiChu in disguise, he placed the
petition on the tiny altar with the coin inside it for an anchor. Then he sat back down on his
bench and prepared to wait.
Master Den said nothing, nor did he reach for the offering on his altar. If it came to a contest,
the trickster god had eternity to outsit him. Llesho gave a little sigh and surrendered.
"He comes to me in my dreams. Master Markko. He tells me I'm dying, and I believe him.
Then I wake up, and he's gone, and I'm still here." Still alive. But the dreams sometimes felt
more real than the waking world.
"And you want to know—?"
"Is it real? Or am I going mad?"
"Ah."
Llesho waited for Master Den to go on, fretfully at first, but as the silence stretched between
them, he found that his fears, all his conscious thought, for that matter, drifted away. He heard
the merry chime of water dashing on stone, and saw the bright flick of the light bouncing off the
droplets in myriad rainbows. He felt the sun on his back, and the breeze on his face, and the
rough split logs of the bench under his backside. The sun moved, and he turned his head to feel
its heat on his closed eyes, on his smile. Without realizing it was happening, the moment stole
through him, sunlight filling all the chinks and crannies of his fractured existence. He was aware
only of a profound peace settling in his heart and his gut, pinning him to his bench in a perfect
eternity of now.
"As long as you hold the world in your heart, he can't touch you." Master Den gave a little
shrug. "But if you ever tire of the world, have something else to grab onto."
His mind went to Carina, the healer with hair the color of the Golden River Dragon, and eyes like
Mara's, who aspired to be the eighth mortal god. But he knew instinctively that wasn't what his
teacher meant. He already had a purpose to hold him: to free his country and open the gates
of heaven. Now he needed a dream more powerful than the ones Master Markko sent to
trouble his sleep. His questions, about the brothers still lost to him that he had pledged his quest
to free and the necklace of the Great Goddess that the mortal goddess SienMa had charged
him to find, would keep for another day. This lesson, to store up the sights and sounds and
smell and touch of peace against the struggle to come, he finally understood.
They sat in comfortable silence together until the sun had reached the zenith, and then Master
Den swept up the petition Llesho had placed on his altar.
"You are wanted at the palace." He flipped Llesho's silver coin in the air, and when it had landed
in the palm of his hand, he tucked it into his own purse with a wink and a lopsided grin. He was,
after all, a trickster god. "It's time to go."
Lesho had already put on the disguise he would wear for the next part of his journey, the
uniform of an imperial militia cadet. Hmishi had stowed the gifts of the mortal goddess—his jade
cup, and the short spear that seemed to want him dead—in his pack for the road. He had only
to find his companions and be gone. Still, he doubted their plan.
" don't know who in their right mind would hire me to protect their camels," he grumbled.
Merchants would expect a cadet of his age to have the skills and reflexes of a soldier, but no
real experience of combat. "I explained that to Emperor Shou, but you know how he is." Shou
had simply raised an eyebrow and asked when had he ever left anything to chance.
"I'm sure he has something in mind. After all, he had a very good teacher." Master Den winked,
sharing the joke. He was, of course, that teacher, which didn't reassure Llesho at all.
Their horses awaited them at the rear of Shou's palace, in a cobbled courtyard milling with
servants and stable hands, with friends staying behind and friends who would continue the
quest, though not as many of the latter as Llesho had hoped to see. Kaydu was crying openly.
Little Brother, her monkey companion, offered what chittering comfort he could from his perch
on her shoulder.
"If I were a better witch, I could send an avatar of myself to ride with you." She gave him a
hug, which dislodged Little Brother and made Llesho wish they
had been more than friends on
the road.
"Her ladyship needs you here." He understood that.
Master Markko, the magician who had betrayed the empire to the Harn, had escaped: none of
them were safe until he was found and taken prisoner. After Llesho, Kaydu and her father had
more experience with the traitor's evil than anyone else alive.
"I'll come after you, when we find his trail," she assured Llesho. "The gods know that you can't
take care of yourself on the road."
Llesho smiled weakly at the joke. He would have told her how the magician came to him in
dreams and threatened all he loved, but they were only dreams and didn't change anything. "I'll
watch for you along the way," he promised. He wished he'd had the nerve to ask ChiChu to
watch out for her. Asking anything of the trickster god was . . . tricky . . . however, and secretly
he had hoped the god of the laundry would come with him to Thebin.
"I'm letting you down again." Bixei kept himself a little apart from the crowd. Stipes, a patch
over the empty socket where he'd lost an eye in battle, stood at his partner's side. Bixei
wouldn't meet Llesho's gaze, but stared at his feet as if overcome by his own failure to put duty
ahead of Stipes. "The old man needs me."
Stipes gave him a jab in the ribs. "I'm no old man, though I can't deny I need the young'un
here." A smirk escaped him at the description, Bixei being no child but a young warrior, and
himself still muscled from battle. But he admitted, half ashamed, "It tore my heart out when
Lord Chin-shi sold him to her ladyship. Now that we are free, we'd not be split apart and,
together, we'd be a hindrance to you. Who would hire a guard with just one eye?"
Llesho wanted to answer, "I will hire you, one eye or none," but he couldn't be that selfish.
Stipes wasn't fit and the trek they had ahead of them might kill them all as it was.
"It's not like you have abandoned the fight," Llesho reasoned with him. "Shokar needs you to
help train the recruits. You'll still be working against Markko and the Harn. And who knows? You
may get a chance to save my ass again." Llesho smiled in spite of his anger. It wasn't Bixei or
Stipes he was mad at.
Shokar wasn't coming either. With the slaves freed, the oldest of the seven exiled princes had
set himself the task of finding their Thebin countrymen carried into bondage by the Harn. Bixei
and Stipes would train the Thebin recruits into an army, and they would follow later, when, or
"if," Shokar had said. He had escaped the Harn attack, being out of the country at the time,
and had spent the years of exile as a farmer and a free man. "If there are enough of us left to
make a difference, we will follow.
"But there are a thousand li of Harn between Thebin and this, our only safe retreat. If we have
to fight our way, march by march, there may not be enough of us left to do more than die on
our own home soil."
Shokar had grieved for his brothers, but he had a family and a home in Shan, and he hadn't
come looking in all the seasons that Llesho had suffered on Pearl Island. He felt Shokar's
absence at his side like a missing weapon. The ghost had told him to find his brothers. He was
not sure it would be possible to take Thebin back from the Harn if they didn't stand together.
But he could not change his brother's mind. And Shokar, who had wanted him to stay safe in
Shan, would not watch him go. Adar waited patiently, however, a hand on his mount's nose, and
Lling and Hmishi both sat astride the sturdy little horses that had carried them from Farshore
Province. Mara, who had traveled to battle in the belly of a dragon, had declared herself too old
for such goings-on anymore. She had returned to her cottage in the woods with the explanation
that adventures belonged to the young; the old needed more naps than a quest allowed. Her
daughter, Carina, had joined them in her place, which suited Llesho just fine. During his recent
convalescence, he'd had plenty of time to contemplate the color of her hair—the same
burnished gold as the scales on the great back of her father, the Golden River Dragon— and her
smile, which reminded him of her mother. Now he would have the weeks of their journey to
debate the color of her eyes.
Shou hadn't come out to see them off. His ambassador had informed them that the emperor
was occupied elsewhere. So, that was everybody. With a last look around to set the memory of
old friends in a stolen moment of peace, Llesho raised himself onto his horse.
"It's time." With a jerk of his chin as farewell, he turned to the open gates. Adar moved up
beside him, and Master Den took up a position on the other side, his stout walking stick in his
hand.
"You don't think I'd send you off on your own, now, do you?" he asked gruffly. "Not after all
the work I've put into you."
Some of the tightness over Llesho's heart loosened. /
can do this, he decided.
We can do this.
"Let's go, then."
Chapter Two
WITH Carina and Hmishi in the lead, and Lling following at the rear, Llesho's party left the
Imperial City of Shan by the kitchen gate at which they'd entered. He'd been asleep when they'd
arrived, and it had been dark at the time, so the narrow, rutted supply lane that took them
away from the palace came as a surprise. Apple trees crowded them on both sides, their
branches growing so low in places that he had to lean over in his saddle to keep from hitting his
head. The lush growth cooled their passage under the two full suns, but Llesho wondered at how
poorly kept the road seemed.
"Not what you expected?" Master Den eyed the dense foliage with appreciation.
"I thought . . ." Llesho paused, trying to put those thoughts in order. He didn't want to criticize
Shou, but he had to wonder what manner of leader would conscience such neglect at the very
gates of his own palace. "I thought the empire was rich and prosperous. But this—"
"Who would believe such a ramshackle lane would lead one to the very heart of the empire,
eh?" Master Den grinned as if he knew some hugely entertaining se-
cret. "Wait a bit before you condemn our friend too severely."
They had journeyed no more than a li when they came to a crossing. Even paving stones,
broken here and there by the roots of trees burrowing near the surface, showed that once the
road had been better tended. Like the lane before it, however, the new road suffered from
neglect.
The crossroad seemed to be a signal for their party to reshape itself. Hmishi left them with a
word over his shoulder about scouting ahead. Llesho would have moved up to take his place
next to Carina, but Master Den held to the bridle of his horse. Adar, however, had no such
restraint. There he was, riding next to Carina as if it were the most natural thing in the world,
and she was looking over at him and smiling. Llesho sneaked a glare at Master Den, who caught
him at it with a trickster's gleam in his eyes. Fortunately, he didn't say anything.
"Where is everybody?" Lling had moved up to replace Adar at Llesho's side, and she cast a
worried look about her. Fewer trees hemmed them in here, but where were the travelers?
"Do you think it's a trap?" Llesho's hand went to the sword at his side, reflexes honed in battle
immediately on alert.
"This road sees more traffic at dawn," Master Den waved a hand at nothing in particular, as far
as Llesho could see. "And sometimes, after dark."
"Spies?" Llesho asked. He knew the emperor's penchant for slipping out of the palace
undetected, and for sneaking secrets in after dark.
"Maybe. But vegetables for certain, and rice and coal and perishables for the larder. You are on
the kitchen road, after all, and most of its usual traffic is home growing the crops that will come
through the gate when the daylight fails."
As an answer it almost made sense. But a few mo-
ments later a farmer passed them heading back the way they had come with a wagonload of
yams. The man had an unusually military bearing for one of such lowly rank, as did the
herdsman they came upon who watched them pick their way around half a dozen sheep milling
in the road. Both gave short bows to Llesho's party.
"They're not . . ."
Master Den twitched an eyebrow, but said only, "Look—"
The road they followed ended, spilling into the great Thousand Li Road to the West, and Llesho
silently apologized for doubting Shou's powers as emperor. The builders had drawn from quarries
all across the empire to construct a patchwork of colors and textures underfoot. The stones had
been carefully dressed to fit together smoothly, and Llesho realized that they'd been laid out in a
pattern of light and dark in grays and greens that mimicked brush strokes on pale green paper.
"It's as wide as the market square in the city," Den said, urging him forward. Transfixed, Llesho
watched all of Shan passing before him in the shadow of the Great Wall of the imperial city.
Traveling merchants and bellowing camels and covered wagons that served as homes on wheels
for the hapless souls who pulled them followed the great trade road west. The emperor had
released a division of his regular militia for hire to the merchants who rode or walked the
Thousand Li Road. Even Stipes might have felt at home among some of the more grizzled
bands that marched purposefully forward to their private cadences.
There should have been dust from the tramp of so many feet, but the stones of the road
showed patches of damp where a sprinkler wagon had passed. On the far side of the road the
trees had thinned. Between them Llesho could see softly rolling fields of green topped with bright
yellow flowers in rows like ribbons floating over the dark brown earth.
On the near side, the city wall raised its massive stone shoulder high above his head. Each
green block in the Great Wall would have come up to his chin if stood on end instead of lying on
its side. He saw no mortar between the stones, but the wall didn't suffer for the lack— hardly a
chink showed for as far as Llesho could see.
"Does this please you more, my prince?" Master Den asked, pausing only for an ironic bow as
he walked.
"I take it all back," Llesho admitted, although he had spoken few of his doubts aloud.
Master Den looked very pleased, as if he were responsible himself for the Imperial Road. Which
he might be, Llesho figured. If asked, the trickster god was as likely to lie about it as not, but
one could never tell with a powerful being which way the lie would go. Would he claim a feat he
hadn't performed, or deny a feat he had?
"It's a wonder," he finally offered. The god could take it as a comment or a compliment as he
chose. It seemed the right thing to say, because Master Den's eyes twinkled with pleasure.
"Yes, it is. Travelers' tales mention the Thousand Li Road to the West as one of the great
wonders of the world. The Great Wall of Shan they count as another. Three guards can walk
abreast along the watch-path at the top, and a fast messenger can run from one end of the
city to the other within the wall itself. There are cuts carved high overhead to give the inner
passage light during the day, and torches light the way by night."
"Kungol had no wall." Llesho stared up at the mass of stone that towered over them. His
mother and father might still be alive if they'd had any defenses at all. But Kungol was a holy
city, her people given to prayer and meditation—and to the daily struggle to survive the barren,
airless climate of the heights. They had not concerned themselves with battle strategy.
Master Den nodded, as if he followed all that Llesho did not say. Then he went on, telling a story
as he had so many times in the laundry on Pearl Island. As he had back then, Llesho figured
there was a lesson Den meant him to learn, and settled in to listen.
"Shan first rose as a city in the time of the great warlords, before there was an empire or an
emperor," Master Den explained. "The lands that now make up the independent provinces of
the empire waged war against each other. Thieves and bandits plundered their neighbors and
dashed across each other's borders to safety, only to return the next time they got hungry.
The warlords built their walled cities as a defense against each other and the bandits.
"Shan had won more of its battles than most, however, and for a while its ruthless warlords
imposed their iron control over their own people and their surrounding neighbors. In the
deceptive peace that followed, the city grew like wild blackberries outside the walls that were
originally built to protect it. The old city inside the defenses turned to administration and
governance and left the work of providing food and clothing and shelter to the provincial citizens
who gathered at the foot of the Great Wall. The officials thought they were safe against any
attack, but the seemingly impossible happened. Those neighboring warlords banded together
against their more powerful oppressor. They burned the city that had grown up outside the
walled defenses, but no fire or hurled stone or wizardry could penetrate the stones themselves.
"During the siege that followed, the barbarians attacked from the west—not the Harn, but the
people we know as the Shan today. They drove back the warlords, but the wall still stood,
protecting the rulers who cowered within. Fortunately—" Here, Master Den gave Llesho a
hard-eyed glance, "—a wanderer among them knew the secrets of the tunnels through the city
walls. By night the barbarians crept into the city. By morning they held it all and had driven out
those comfortable ministers and noliticians and false priests. Since that time, the wall has grown
with the city. The old foundations make good roadbeds."
"I suppose it was the false priests who prompted the wanderer to reveal his secrets," Llesho
gibed, more interested at the moment in the fall of the old city than the rise of the new. He had
no doubt who that wanderer had been, almost expressed aloud the thought that crossed his
mind—that only a fool would trust a trickster with the plans to one's defenses. Since he was
doing the selfsame thing, he had to wonder if there was as much warning as history in the
story.
Master Den fell still, a dark sorrow carving lines around his mouth. "Actually, it was the false
generals. When the neighboring warlords put the new city to the flame, no general, no politician,
nor any priest rode out to rescue their dying people. Armies, grown fat on the taxes of those
tradesmen and skillsmiths, hid themselves behind their wall for protection while outside the
children screamed and the mothers begged for help and with their husbands beat their lives out
against the flames."
Llesho could hear the anguish of the parents, even the crackle of the flames. He could feel in his
throat the cries of the children, and the tight pain of holding back his own screams, waiting for
his moment. Almost he imagined the slick glide of blood on a fist much smaller than the one he
clenched now, the knife slipping between ribs, ;and the raider falling under the weight of Llesho's
seven jsummers. It hadn't been enough. They'd murdered his father, killed his sister and
thrown her body on a pile of 'refuse like yesterday's garbage, scattered his brothers, and sold
them into slavery. His beautiful, wise mother was gone, dead.
"What was Thebin's sin?" he asked, his voice rough as if he was still holding back his screams
today. "What did we do that was so terrible that our country had to die?"
"Nothing." Master Den shook his head slowly from side to side, as if trying to rid himself of the
taste of ash in his mouth. "Sometimes evil wins, that's all."
Sometimes, evil wins. Llesho stared up at the wall that marched beside them, li after li of stone
between the city and the fields that stretched away from it. "When I am king, Kungol will have a
wall, and watchful guards, and an army," he decided.
But posing as traders and merchants, the Harn had entered the imperial city through her open
gates as easily as thaj had entered Kungol. The fields that lay around him might be put to the
torch just like that long ago city. Master Den already knew, of course. A wall could imprison its
builders inside their own fears, but it could not keep out a determined enemy.
"There has to be a way to protect my people, or why am I going back at all?" he demanded.
The goddess' people. "If all I can do is bring more death, what is the point?"
Master Den gave him that scornful look that he'd seen too often in the practice yard. So he
ought to know better. Fine. If he didn't get it, was it his fault, or his teacher's?
"What protects Shan?"
Not the wall.
The emperor. Emperor, general, trader, spy. Friend. Judge. Not the office, then. "Shou.
Emperor Shou."
"What is in here—" Master Den placed a hand over his heart. "Not the robes, the man. Can you
be that man, Llesho?"
"Not yet." He didn't speak his doubts aloud—Shou was twice Llesho's age, and he had a heart
for adventure, while Llesho just wanted to go home—didn't want to make his fears real in the
world, as speech would do. But Master Den knew the uncertainty that curled like a worm in his
gut.
"You will be."
Llesho didn't trust that confident smile. Master Den was his teacher, but he was also the
trickster god. And trusting Thebin's fate to such a god seemed . . . unwise. It worried him that
he couldn't seem to help himself, though the story of the Great Wall warned him against trust.
Finally he shook his head. The story would simmer in the back of his brain somewhere, until the
moment when need and understanding came together.
The sun was warm on his skin, however, and if nothing else, Master Den's stories were good to
pass the time. He realized that they'd been riding for several hours and, with a shiver, that the
Great Wall of Shan still tracked them on their way. He'd known the imperial city was big, but he
hadn't quite wrapped his mind around
how big.
They were coming to an end, however. From a distance the sound of the caravansary drifted
softly on the wind. The lowing of camels, and the clanging of their bells, the general uproar of
drovers and grooms and loaders and merchants and acrobats and beggars released a flood of
happy memories. Llesho urged his horse to a faster pace, leaving his teacher behind with his
concerns about the future. Master Den dropped back to walk with Carina, who smiled her
welcome while her horse continued its slow amble. Llesho felt a sudden flash of temper that
confused him before the smells of camels and cooking and dust pushed whatever thought he'd
started out of his mind. Adar caught up with him and rode at his side as he had when Llesho
was a child, with Lling and Hmishi following tight on his tail. A stranger would have mistaken Adar
for the focus of the guards' protection. Llesho himself did not realize that his brother, as well as
his companions and his teacher, all set their guard for him.
Chapter Three
TUCKED behind a screen of slender pine trees at the side of the road, the first inn came into
view. Then another, then both sides of the street were lined with stables and lodgings for the
grooms who smelled like the stables and, beyond them, open fields of camels that smelled the
worst of all. More than a thousand brown and tan hummocks dotted the landscape surrounding
the caravanserai. Only their dignified heads rising on tall necks showed they were not themselves
part of the rolling earth, but pack camels resting peacefully on the grasses of the pastureland.
A little farther on, the road widened into a market square much larger than the one inside the
city walls where Llesho had battled Master Markko and his Har-nish allies, but just as crowded.
Food vendors hawked their sweet and savory wares behind counters decked with ribbons in the
colors of their provinces. Scattered among the food shops, small traders called out prices from
behind heaps of lesser grade silks and tin pots and incense, while street musicians and
puppeteers vied for the dregs of the market-going pocketbooks. Just as Llesho had seen inside
the city, however, great trading houses of dignity and power lined the square. Sturdy pillars
carved from the trunks of fine hardwood trees framed these "temporary" residences of the
wealthy merchants. Windows of real glass looked out onto the world of commerce, and silk
banners with the names of their houses floated on the breeze in front of brass doors beaten in
elaborate designs. One banner, over a house of modest design but elegant execution, said,
"Huang Exotic Imports Exports" and Llesho wondered if the owner bore any relation to the
emperor's minister, Huang HoLun.
At the backs of the great houses, along side streets wide enough to accommodate the flat carts
used for moving merchandise, counting houses and storage warehouses and money-changing
establishments rose in support of the wealth of the caravan merchants. Llesho mulled over
Master Den's story about the fall of the old walled city as he guided his horse through the
market. The settled part of the Imperial City of Shan now lay protected behind the great city
wall, but too much of the wealth of the city had moved out among the inns and stables and
marketplaces. As in the story of old, the caravanserai had become a city of its own sprawling
into the countryside on the outside of Shan's defenses. He couldn't help but wonder if the
emperor committed the same mistake as his ancestor. If he'd understood the story aright,
though, Shou's ancestors had been the barbarian invaders, not the self-serving officials who had
let their people die rather than risk battle.
As evening softened around them, the crowd thinned. Imperial citizens packed up their wares
and returned to the illusion of safety within Shan's walls, leaving only the strangers to tend their
camels and their trade. "The barbarian is once again at your gate," Llesho muttered to himself
as he guided his horse around jugglers and past vendors who reached for his stirrup with bits of
food upraised to tempt the traveler. "But this time he's brought his shop and money counter
with him."
A hand brown as his own thrust at him with a skewer of meat cooked over coals in the Thebin
style. The wonderful smell of woodsmoke and food made his mouth water, but Llesho kept his
head turned forward and gave no sign that he recognized what he was offered. Adar had the
look of the North about him, and Llesho was supposed to be on guard. He stole a glance at the
vendor as they passed, however, and bit back the disappointment when a lined old face he
didn't know stared up at him. Foolish, to expect his brothers to fall over his horse on the road,
especially on the caravan road at Shan. Shokar would have found any brother in the area. Still,
he had hoped for a moment, and he felt the disappointment like a loss.
Adar led them to a small inn of modest frontage, suitable for one of careful means and a
delicate nose. The sign on the door announced the inn as "Moon and Star: rooms to let by the
evening." They entered through a small dining hall, much cheered by the thought of food and
sleep. A window screened in oiled parchment let in the light but kept the dust of the road out of
the public room, which was decorated in quiet tones of pine and oak polished to a respectable
sheen.
The proprietor—Llesho identified him by the huge apron that wrapped twice around his thin
form—dozed on a low padded bench in the corner. His occasional loud snorts interrupted the
drone of his snoring, but his brood of energetic children seemed to manage perfectly well without
his assistance. A girl about Llesho's age swept the rush mats scattered on a floor of wide, short
boards while another with a few more summers scrubbed the small, low tables until they
gleamed. A son with a round face and complacent smile stood duty at the taps, surrounded by
the crockery and glassware of his profession. The inn offered no entertainment, but did a
passable meat pie, so a comfortable number of the small tables were occupied.
Adar set his hands palm-down on the teak counter. "Two rooms, if you have them, and supper
all around."
"Supper we have, for a fair price to any traveler." The tappy waved his hand at a small boy who
scurried out from behind a folding screen with a tray of the richly seasoned pies. The boy
delivered his steaming treasures to a table of hungry soldiers laughing in the corner and stopped
for Adar's order. When he had disappeared again into the back of the inn, the tappy wiped his
hands on his apron and considered the man sleeping in the corner.
"As for rooms, Pap has a caution, there, what with daughters in the house."
One of those daughters stole a glance at Adar and blushed before scurrying into the kitchen.
Her step grew decidedly more pigeon-toed beneath her long wrapped tunic and dress. The
tappy gave Adar a sharp look, but Adar smiled blandly, with no sign that he noticed the gentle
suggestion in the girl's walk.
With a little shrug, the tappy made his decision: "The emperor trusts all of Shan to his militia, I
suppose I can do no less with the inn. A quarter tael for pies and ale. Rooms are one tael, but
there aren't two to let. If you take the one, you'll find clean covers and a fresh mattress. If
your guards wish to hire companionship, they will have to look elsewhere, however, as this inn
does not provide such entertainments." Llesho suspected that the pigeon-toed young daughter
feathered her nest with the gifts of her admirers, but said nothing of this to her brother, who
continued to explain the house.
"We have four rooms occupied besides your own, all men and one room a large party, so your
lady should not go wandering during the night." He gestured at Carina when he spoke. Whether
he did not know that Lling was also female, or assumed that she could handle any unwanted
attentions from fellow lodgers, Llesho couldn't quite tell. Neither could Lling, whose expression
closed down while she tried to figure out if she should consider the omission an insult or a
compliment. "Your man sleep in the stables?"
The innkeeper jerked his chin in Master Den's direction, and Llesho bristled at this casual
dismissal.
This is no servant but a god, he thought,
and you are not worthy to serve him in your
house. Pray he doesn't curse your pies with burned bottoms for your insolence. But he knew
their safety depended upon the ruse.
Adar had a cooler head, and a purse to back his demands, however. "I am never parted from
my servant, or my apprentice," he insisted blandly.
"Of course, my good sir." The tappy shrugged a shoulder—the ways of foreigners were no
concern of his—and led them to a pair of low tables inlaid with elaborate leaf swirls of black and
red lacquer. The three guards and the "servant" he directed to one table. The master and his
apprentice shared the second.
From where he sat, Llesho could scan the entire public house, and he did so carefully, noting
patrons scattered through the room as varied as the milling crowd outside. The table at their
right was unoccupied. On Adar's left several burly men dressed in modest but well-repaired coats
and breeches, and with a family resemblance about the eyes, dug into a dinner of eel pie in thick
green gravy. In the far corner, two men with golden skin and dark hair shared a table. The
younger reminded him of Bixei, and he wondered how his sometimes friend was faring on
Shokar's farm. He shivered in spite of himself when his gaze fell upon the older man, who might
have been Master Markko himself, except for the scar that crossed his face, and the humor
that lit his eyes. Master Markko had never smiled, never laughed like that, in all the time Llesho
had known him. But the presence of members of the magician's race at the inn reminded Llesho
that his enemies could likewise travel in disguise.
Llesho and his friends were the only Thebins, but not the only patrons who wore the imperial
uniform, although they were the youngest and wore insignia of the lowest rank. Several widely
scattered tables of officers sat with dignity in quiet conversation over their dinners.
As Llesho's gaze passed over them, each officer's table paused in mid-word or bite to return his
study before picking up their own business. Adar's presence as their employer explained why a
table of young recruits might stop at an inn that would exceed their pocketbooks and sorely
disappoint their search for the pleasures of the caravan marketplace. If deeper calculation went
on behind those experienced eyes, they gave no evidence of it.
A boy and a girl each wearing a brightly patterned apron moved about their tables to offer water
for washing and warm towels for drying their hands and faces before they began their dinner.
The servers departed again, the boy to disappear behind a painted screen that hid the door to
the kitchen. He returned with a tray full of pies. Eel had given way to a filling of questionable
ancestry that took a bit of chewing, but the roots used for flavoring had a savor to them that
brought tears to the eye and a smile to the lip.
"Wine, sir?" The tappy had returned with two small earthen vessels filled with wine in one hand
and a candle set in a small wire basket in the other. He set one crock of wine on the table
between the guards—they must content themselves with cold wine. To Adar he gave a bow
calculated to the station he had measured them to fit, and set the wire basket on the table. The
girl lit the candle, and her brother the tappy set the wine vessel into the basket which held the
earthen base just above the flame.
"And some cider for the ladies," Adar amended. Lling, of course, would drink as much wine as
any of the men at the table, while Llesho preferred cider. He had already scandalized the house
by sitting down to supper with his servants, however, and felt no need to burden the kitchen
boy with this intelligence. As they settled to demolishing their own dinners, a rumble of voices
filled the open door of the public room.
". . . slaves . . . trade . . ."
The Harn who piled into the public room wore native dress, still red with the dust of the
grasslands. Secure in the knowledge that no one so far from Harn would understand their
language, the traders went on with their animated argument, speaking freely among
themselves.
". . . dead . . . money . . ."
They were almost right. Llesho had never learned more than a few words of Harnish, but picking
the few he did know out of the conversation in the doorway sent a chill down his spine. Now that
Shan had outlawed the sale of prisoners in the slave market, the Harnishmen had to decide
between smuggling in the illegal slave market or finding a new business. Their debate seemed to
hinge more on the penalties for breaking the law than any change of heart about the trade.
Unconsciously, Llesho's fingers went to his knife. Before he could draw, however, a larger hand
wrapped his own. Master Den held him firmly but gently in place, giving him a twitch of his head
imperceptible to anyone but Llesho, who knew his teacher's methods very well. "Not now," that
almost not there gesture said, and "No danger . . . yet." Harn on the attack would approach
with greater caution. Llesho relaxed back into his seat, a wait and see promise in his eyes that
satisfied his teacher.
When Master Den removed his hand, Llesho's awareness opened up to take in the silent room
around him. All attention was concentrated upon the strangers. Terrified, the innkeeper's
daughter gasped and dropped the empty wine jug she had collected from their table. The crash
of breaking crockery snapped the attention of the room like the crack of a whip.
They don't know who we are, Llesho repeated silently to reassure himself.
They can't know who
we are. They carry the dust of the eastern road on their clothes and could not have been in
Master Markko's army when he attacked. The leader among them said something in his own
language, out of which Llesho caught the word for a child-slave and another that meant
incompetent soldier, but he gave no sign that he recognized the Thebins in their militia uniforms
by anything more than their nationality. His comrades' answering laughter died, however, when
the senior militia men began, one by one, to rise from their seats.
"We are full up, gentlemen," the innkeeper informed them with a shaky voice and a desperate
glance at the scattered soldiers coming to attention throughout the public room. "And we have
just run out of pies."
The leader of the small group considered the innkeeper's words and the battle-nervy veterans
ranged against him. "We are not welcome here," he conceded. "We will bother you no further."
Raising his hands to show that he was weaponless, he gestured to his companions. Following his
lead, they made a solemn bow to the room and filed out of the inn much more quietly than they
had come. Once outside, the argument began again, this time in grimmer tones. Llesho heard
only well remembered curses that faded as the party moved away.
"They will find no warmer welcome anywhere in Shan Province," a grizzled old soldier asserted
from the corner. "Treacherous bastards will sleep with the camels tonight."
Agreement murmured throughout the public room and Adar seized the moment of camaraderie
with the poise of an accomplished liar—a skill Llesho had never known him to possess.
"Probably looking for protection," he sniffed, "As if a decent goddess-loving man would attach his
party to the company of barbarians!"
This brought a laugh from the room, as Adar was taken for a fool who did not know how useless
his youthful guards would be.
"It's no cause for laughter," Adar chided them. "I have purchased the services of the empire's
great militia to protect myself and my apprentice on the journey and already they have served
me well—note how our intruders withdrew upon recognizing the military presence in this room.
With such success I should have no trouble in trading their services to a likely merchant in
exchange for passage with a party heading West by the southern route.
"Though not," he added, "a Harnish party."
Someone at a nearby table snorted his disbelief, and Llesho tried to look both foolish and
attentive as an untried cadet might. He noticed bland calculation in the eyes of the officers,
however. The danger, if it existed, came from the men who did not doubt at all the skill of
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